Hince: Forget the salary cap

UNLIKE the vast majority of club chairmen, Dave Whelan knows his onions when it comes to football. No great surprise there, mind you. Most chairmen couldn’t spot the difference between a football and a cauliflower.

UNLIKE the vast majority of club chairmen, Dave Whelan knows his onions when it comes to football. No great surprise there, mind you.

Most chairmen - particularly down there on the south coast - couldn’t spot the difference between a football and a cauliflower.

The Wigan Athletic owner was a professional footballer himself many years ago - and a damn good one until injury cut sort his career.

So when Whelan expresses his disquiet about the effect Chelsea’s dominance is having on the Premiership, he deserves to be listened to.

And virtually everything the Wigan supremo had to say about the threat facing England’s flagship league since the arrival of Roman Abramovich at Stamford Bridge is smack on the button.

Whelan is right when he says that if Chelsea continue to run away with the Premieship title year in year out, the entire competition will be devalued.

He’s right when he says that attendances will drop because fans won’t cough up good money to watch foregone conclusions.

And he’s right when he says that, in the transfer market, the Premiership is no longer a level playing field because of Abramovich’s colossal spending power.

Unworkable

Where the Wigan owner and I go our separate is Whelan’s belief that Chelsea’s stranglehold on the Premiership will be loosened if FIFA impose a salary cap on all our top-flight clubs. That would be both wrong and unworkable.

Let’s start with the obvious flaw in Whelan’s solution.

Chelsea’s Russian owner has personally financed a spending spree the like of which has never before been witnessed in the entire history of professional football. But that’s the point. It’s his own money.

Would FIFA have any legal right to tell him how much he should pay Frank Lampard or Damien Duff when that money comes out of his own pocket? Somehow I doubt it.

Chelsea are achieving with Abramovich’s millions has been achieved before. The only difference this time is that the club from Stamford Bridge are doing it on a grander scale.

The Premiership has never been a level playing field in terms of financial clout. Our top-flight league has always been populated by the "haves" and the "have-nots."

From 1993 to 2003, the Premiership, to all extents and purposes, was a two-horse race.

If the championship trophy was not going to be won by Manchester United, it was going to be won by Arsenal.

Why did those two clubs so comprehensively dominate England’s major league during that decade?

Lack of success

Firstly those two clubs had - and still have - two of the best managers in the business in Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger.

Secondly, Fergie and Wenger had a financial budget to work with which no other Premiership club could match with the possible exception of Liverpool and Newcastle whose lack of success says everything about the inability of the boards to appoint the right manager.

Until Abramovich pitched up, where were the best salaries on offer to players?

At Old Trafford and Highbury. Roy Keane, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy in Manchester. Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell, Robert Pires in London.

The funny thing is, when United and Arsenal were paying their players a king’s ransom to turn the Premiership title race into a private two-club event, no-one suggested a salary-cap.

Now an influential chairman like Whelan is suggesting that a salary-limit should be imposed throughout the Premiership just because Chelsea have the same financial advantage over their rivals.

But it is the responsibility of clubs like United, Arsenal and Liverpool to close the gap which has opened between themselves and Chelsea by using their own initiative and resources.

Just as in life, nothing lasts for ever in football. Chelsea’s current dominance over the Premiership won’t last for ever.

But the rest shouldn’t just sit there waiting for it to happen.

Fergie and Wenger both have well-merited, sky-high managerial reputations. Now perhaps we will see what they are really made of.